Ina Garten’s Szechuan noodles are awesome, but I wanted to see if I could make my own version of sesame noodles. I’ve eaten them plenty of times at restaurants and I’ve tried out enough recipes to be able to reproduce them at home.

Last time I made them, Ricky Dweck mentioned that he likes to put coconut milk in his sesame noodles, so I made sure to try that out.

Remember when we made mehshi kusa and hollowed out all of that squash and zucchini? You didn’t think we’d just waste those precious insides, did you? Of course not. We popped those insides in the freezer for later use. And then gave them to our mom so she could make kusa jibben for lunch.

Kusa Jibben is a classic Syrian dish; kusa, as you know, means squash, and jibben is cheese. So basically it’s squash and cheese.

I decided to try out a new recipe for Asian-y peanut-y noodles and remembered seeing Ina Garten make some for a barbecue on the beach (don’t ask me how this fits in with a barbecue), so I searched for “sesame noodles” on the Food Network’s website and didn’t see it. I didn’t think I imagined this particular episode of Barefoot Contessa, so I narrowed my results by chef – and these Szechuan noodles were the first, third, and fourth hit (out of four).

Okay, so maybe the words sesame and Szechuan aren’t interchangeable, and maybe you don’t barbecue them, but I made them anyway, and I’m glad I did. The ingredients were overwhelming at first: Fresh ginger? Tahini? Sherry vinegar? But I ended up having many of them in the fridge/pantry already. I bought almost everything else from Whole Foods, and for the rest I left out or substituted with something I had lying around.

All of the spices and ingredients resulted in delicious layers of flavor, and although I made way too much (a whole pound of pasta for two people!?) I was able to enjoy leftovers, since this dish is just as tasty at room temperature, or even out of the fridge, than it is hot.

After watching the Good Eats episode “Use Your Noodle 2” (twice) I decided to try making my own tortellini. I had wanted to try homemade pasta for a while, but I don’t have a pasta maker. Alton said I can make these tortellini without one, so I had to try it. I spent a few hours making this batch, and ended up with a little more than 50 tortellinis (and messed up only four).